Saturday, September 24, 2016

Recently Heath Brougher, the poetry editor of Five2One Magazine, gave me the idea to set up a tribute to Felino A. Soriano, a dynamic and prolific jazz-inspired poet. You've seen a fair number of his poems at this blog-zine. Tonight I thought I'd bring them together for this tribute, starting with "Of This Momentum Song (Forty-two)," a piece written especially for The Song Is and nominated for the 2015/6 Best of the Net.

Of this Momentum Song (forty-two)

_______________

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

—Miles Davis

To be near ________,

is what

here needs it

to be, an unnamed

name is only

________ when

the

mouth closes, excavating

rhythm in all

language, when

then here is again

and why we ________

is

answered atop

a silence of small

stone: the flecks

within the reflect

hold the hand

of what watches,

how or when

the

breath of our going,

_________. We come

to drink of/from. The

promise held to

how we name the

unnamed. Paused

intuition, we’ve a

nuance in our

motivated ________,

a

freeing fathom can

reinvent the mouth.

______________________

Tongue: blurred wing

song of clapping

hands. Hands:

speaking

bilingual caliber, ________

what we need

to invent, unaltered.

Organized, we hour by

the sound of it, sound-

ing out to open

doors

in incremental minutes.

Certain these angles

plagiarize shape,

_______

is familiar,

is

known then replaced

into what finds

a self-outside

the self, privileged,

________

Since this will be a long entry, I am going to post one song after each poem or set of poems. Here is Miles Davis' "In a Silent Way/It's About That Time": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9X7XmigDxw Interestingly, you don't hear Miles' trumpet until about four minutes in.

-------------------------------------

"Underneath," a tribute to Vijay Iyer, was nominated for the 2014/5 Best of Net. It is also part of Felino's Forms migrating series.

Underneath

I want to live, experiment with focuses, rearrange fragmentations.

Create alternate apparitions, converse across patterned puddles

attempting silent art into an acclimation of open structure. I’d

live then, if each year didn’t curtail with predetermined fallacies of

bruised resolutions. I listen, then; the perfect option among voices

hitching and holding onto stories delving, if by thrown, and the sequencing

of truth singing and louder, singing into the dark halls of my eyes’ misplaced

confidence.

Vijay Iyer also inspired "Morning, this," a poem where you see Felino's love for his daughter.

Felino has paid tribute to a number of different musicians, often drawing attention to lesser-known contemporary men and women as well as highlighting the classic figures. The first poem I received from him was "toward smile and its fundamental creation/for Takuya Kuroda." Blue Note Records describes Kuroda as a "forward-thinking musician with a bent towards mixing post-bop and adventurous soul jazz." I would also call Felino a forward-thinking poet with a bent towards mixing jazz and adventurous poetry.

I especially appreciate "Listening," one of the poems in the Summer 2015 contest of poems inspired by female musicians. The musician honored here is pianist Geri Allen.

Listening

—after Geri Allen’s Soul Eyes

each gate wanders, opens widens,

reopens

an interpretation of a window’ssignature of contouring syllablesshaped by hands of popularassociation, —a connected dedicationopens the visual hanker toalign purpose with the proseof companionship’s configuration, eachsmile of an onlooker holds an embraceablemoment, an emblem stays, hoveringabove what portends color to confirmemotional clarification, and the eyeswill remember each chapter, eachpage will ignite imagination’s pageantry,consecrated contemplation

I know you want to listen to "Soul Eyes": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFKpxFqqAqs---------------------------------------------------------I'm going to close with a statement of poetics that Felino sent me and that I published with his poems on Robert Glasper and Christian Scott.

Summation of poetics:

My writing stems from the perspective of positing a poetic language of immanent discovery. Often, the burden of everyday language—one offering a sameness and lack of creative spontaneity—creates spectral desensitization toward environment and the paradigms of interrogating what expands into beautiful presentations. I am first, an interpreter of what surrounds me; music is foundational, and the found rhythms inspire and dictate each poem’s identity and spatial configuration. I am interested in language as longevity, in advocating for its limitless disposition toward revealing, —and in this revealing, I aim to uncover/unconceal angles of what is unseen, the belly of a stone’s cool and undisturbed silence.

Jazz works its way into my language, —through rhythm and interpretation, its spontaneous and improvisational qualities augments my desire to create a text that behaves from the perspective of unaltered fruition.